


Love and Lost Affection

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Hopeful Ending, M/M, Saavik-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 23:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10751571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: Those that die do not return. It is immutable fact, a law of the universe. And yet here Spock is, alive but not the same. The fact that he is breathing at all, if in an altered form, is a miracle, or at the very least a vast amount of luck. Saavik wonders briefly if Spock or his bondmate believed in either.





	Love and Lost Affection

I.

Her hair is tossed back from her face by the snow-laced wind, which cuts through her swiftly and efficiently, chilling each individual limb as if with sentient vengeance. She grips her communicator more tightly, aware that her hands, already reddening, will soon chap from the frigid temperature.

“We have found the life sign,” she practically shouts to Captain Esteban, the wind whipping her voice away almost before it reaches her communicator. “It is a Vulcan child, perhaps,” she stops, analyses, “8-10 Earth years of age.”

“A child?” Esteban asks loudly. “How did he get there?”

Ignoring the fact that he immediately assumed the male gender, Saavik says, “It is Dr. Marcus’s opinion that this is-”

The child reaches out a hand to her. Before she can stop it, her head is full of  _ cold-pain-loneliness-confusion-cold-curiosity- _

Her voice falters, thickens, and stops in her throat. The sensations are sharp and piece right through her, but they are wordless. The child has no language.

It drops its hand, and Saavik can breathe again. She inhales, forces words out. “That the Genesis effect has regenerated-”

She is computing. Again, she finds that there is only one solution. As fantastic as it is, the most logical possibility is that this child, this baby, is Spock.

“Captain Spock,” she finishes. 

The child regards her with dark, unreadable eyes. If Spock is indeed its name,  _ his _ name, he doesn’t know it.

Saavik stares back. There is no connection between her and the child. Before he died, she and Spock had a family bond, one that was ever-present but never intrusive, curled in the backs of their minds like a well-loved scroll that was never opened. It severed the moment of his death aboard the Enterprise. Spock rescued her as a child from where her living family abandoned her on Hellguard. And now here she is, playing the same role he played for her. It is the most bizarre reversal she has ever seen.

The wordless child continues to stare. Saavik continues to marvel.

Those that die do not return. It is immutable fact, a law of the universe. And yet here Spock is, alive but not the same. The fact that he is breathing at all, if in an altered form, is a miracle, or at the very least a vast amount of luck. She wonders, briefly, if Spock or his bondmate believed in either.  
  


II.

“It is time for total truth between us,” Saavik tells David. She meets his eyes levelly through the cold and the snow. “This planet is not what you intended or hoped for, is it?”

“Not exactly,” David replies, and Saavik reads suppressed emotional pain in his voice.

“Why not?” she asks flatly.

“I used protomatter in the Genesis matrix.”

“Protomatter,” she repeats. “An unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable.”

David shakes his head and moves his hand up to his forehead. Her words are inducing anxiety, defensiveness. “But it was the only way to solve certain problems.”

Saavik looks away, thinking. A comparison presents itself. “So, like your father…” She looks back up to him, “You changed the rules.”

“If I hadn't, it might have been years. Or never.”

Emotion slides past Saavik’s eyes and onto her face -- disappointment and disbelief. She believed in David’s potential. She believed in planet Genesis, and there is precious little she has ever believed in. “How many have paid the price for your impatience?” she asks him forcefully. “How many have died? How much damage have you done?” She pins his gaze with hers. “And what is yet to come?”

David can’t meet her eyes. He shifts young Spock around his waist, uncomfortable.  _ He should be. _

Saavik stands and takes the lead. They keep moving, leaving the snow and tundra for higher and warmer mountains.  
  


III.

Genesis, despite its instability, is beautiful, especially at night, and Saavik wonders if David feels any pride for what he has helped create. She stands with David on a rocky outcropping and looks at the land below.

“This planet’s aging in surges,” he says.

“And Spock with it,” Saavik notes. “It seems they're joined together.”

“They are,” David confirms.

“How long?”

“Days; maybe hours. I'm sorry.”

_ There is someone else who needs your apology more. _ “It will be hardest on Spock,” she tells David, a warning. “Soon he will feel the burning of his Vulcan blood.”

“I don’t understand.”

Again, disbelief. David has been by her side aboard both the Enterprise and the U.S.S. Grissom, not to mention the fact that he’s been a scientist for years, and yet, improbably, he still doesn’t seem to know a thing about Vulcans.

“Pon farr,” she says, hoping it will trigger some recollection. It does not. “Vulcan males must endure it every seventh year of their adult life.”

Before David can respond, his tricorder beeps. “Whoever they are, they’re getting closer,” he says.

“I’ll go.”

David, in what Saavik analyses as an attempt to prove himself, shakes his head. “No. I'll do it. Give me your phaser.”

Saavik reluctantly hands him her weapon, knowing that she will be defenseless if whoever is pursuing them arrives back to her before David does. She watches him leave, tracking his path around the side of the mountain until he is out of her sight.

Then she is alone. She watches the night, enjoying the silence. Shutting her apprehension away, she starts to memorise the landscape in front of her. If planet Genesis does not survive, which is likely, her photographic memory will be the only thing keeping the visuals of the experiment documentable.   
  


IV.

“So. It has come.” 

Saavik enters the cave, takes in the sight of the adolescent Spock shaking. The light from the fire casts moving shadows all around the cavern, painting him in ghastly red. His breath is coming quickly in painful-sounding heaves, and even as he rocks back and forth in the throes of what Saavik knows to be extreme agony, she feels revulsion for what she knows she must do.

She approaches. “It is called pon farr,” she tells him, as gently as she can, wondering if it is at all possible that Spock can understand her. “Pon farr.”

She kneels down in front of him. “Will you trust me?”

He doesn’t want to, but he knows he must.  
  


V.

“Yiahuq!” the Klingon shouts in his own throaty language, ripping Saavik’s hand from the sleeping Spock’s and dragging her to her feet. “Spock!” she shouts as a warning, before she and he are hauled out from the cavern and thrown to the ground. David, too, has been captured, and even if Saavik weren’t half-Vulcan she doesn’t think she’d be surprised. They sit in the grass in the dazzling sunlight with two Klingon sergeants standing behind them, pointing weapons at their backs.

Saavik looks toward the captain.

“I've come a long way for the power of Genesis, and what do I find? A weakling human, a Vulcan boy, and a woman,” he says in disgust.

_ One of three correct. _ “My lord, we are survivors of a doomed expedition,” Saavik says, speaking deferentially in Standard to minimise the chance of the Klingons acting any sudden violence upon her or her compatriots. “This planet will destroy itself in hours. The Genesis experiment is a failure.”

“A failure,” the Klingon repeats. “The most powerful destructive force ever created.”

He moves towards them. “You will tell me the secret of the Genesis torpedo.”

David has the sense not to speak, and Spock, clearly, cannot.

“I have no knowledge,” Saavik tells him, and it’s close enough to honesty that it barely hurts on its way past her lips. Spock can exaggerate, and apparently, so can she.

Her answer is not one the Klingon likes. “Then I hope pain is something you enjoy.”

_ You do not impress me.  _ Saavik readies her mental shields.

Before the captain can act, though, he receives a communication from one of his officers aboard his ship. Saavik cannot understand the single word uttered, but clearly it maddens the captain, for he spits back “I ordered no interruptions!”

There is a brief pause. Then, “Bring me up!”

Within seconds, he is beamed aboard his vessel. The probability that the “interruption” the captain spoke of is the presence of an ally of some sort is high. There are still two Klingon sergeants guarding them, but now they have a chance.

 

VI.

The Klingon will kill her. Saavik has analysed the situation thrice, and she knows she presents the least valuable bargaining chip against Captain Kirk. She is not his child nor his Spock, though she does believe he harbors attachment to her, as she does to him. She knows she will die, and it is rational. Yet rationality, she realises when in the face of death, does not always provide a comfort to one who is only half-Vulcan.

The sunlight glitters down the side of the blade. She can sense the presence of the sergeant behind her. The Klingons stab their victims in the back; it is their nature. 

Then David throws himself sideways, and in a matter of seconds, he is dead.

Before she can process and compartmentalise, she is handed the communicator. She is forced to bear the news.

“Saavik? David?” Kirk asks.  _ His voice is so tenuous. _

“Admiral,” she tells him, and she makes herself emotionless, because if she does not, she will be rendered incapable of speech. “David is dead.”  
  


VII.

Kirk discovers the body in the grass, sprawled and still. Saavik cannot help but feel pity.

“He gave his life to save us,” she tells him.  _ To save me. _

She does not understand why he did so, and she does not understand herself either, because she does not know if she would have done the same for him.

Kirk cradles the body and Saavik has to look away.

“Rapid aging. All genetic functions highly accelerated,” Dr. McCoy is saying, leaning over Spock’s still form. He appears to be unconscious from rapid aging.

“What about his mind?” Kirk asks, and Saavik has to admire how stoic he is. Clearly, he is doing the same she did -- pushing emotions aside so thought can prevail.  _ It must be incredibly difficult for someone of his species.  _ Yet she is not as surprised as she might be -- the Admiral is nothing if not strong.

“His mind's a void. It seems I've got all his marbles.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Kirk asks Saavik.

“Only one thing. Get him off this planet. His aging is part of what's going on around us.” She looks at the fire raging around them, at the rock walls that have already started cracking, at the ground that, at any moment, could heave and plunge them all into magma below. She feels fear, even though fear of death, if death cannot be prevented, is illogical.  
  


VIII.

Spock’s body is in the Bird of Prey’s sickbay. He is still unconscious, but his age has settled back to what it was before. What has happened between them in the cavern may damage their familial bond, if it ever returns, or perhaps he will not remember it at all. Saavik doesn’t know which outcome she prefers.

She saved Spock’s life. She and David.

She places a hand against the Sickbay door but does not open it. 

She thinks of the Admiral. He has found his lover again, his lover who is back from death, his lover whom he has crossed the very universe to find.

He has sacrificed his career and his ship, his home, just for a mere chance of seeing him again.

He has sacrificed his son.

Saavik leans her head against the sickbay door. She has never loved anyone that deeply. She does not know if she can.  
  


IX.

Vulcan is ascetic yet beautiful. It is dramatic and sheer, by turns desert-like and mountainous, with orange mesas receding as far as the eye can see, lit at their bases by the most advanced cities in the knowable universe.

The Bird of Prey soars through it and Saavik takes it in, imbuing herself with images of the sky and the rock formations. It has been years since she was here. It is possible she may belong.

Their ship lands and is welcomed, and she carries Spock out with the rest.

 

X.

Spock passes her by. She meets his eyes and drops them, looking away to the side. She can feel something in the back of her mind; Spock, as himself, has returned. The ritual succeeded.

Their relationship will be strained. That is understandable. Saavik lifts her chin again.

Spock approaches Jim. “My father says you have been my friend,” he says, his voice low and uncertain. Vulnerable. They are far, but she can hear them. “You came back for me.”

“You would have done the same for me.”

There is a silence. “Why would you do this?” Spock finally asks.

_ Because he loves you. _

“Because the needs of the one… outweigh the needs of the many.”

The statement is illogical, but Saavik finds it in herself to understand.

Slowly, Spock begins to speak again, keeping his eyes locked onto the Admiral’s. “I have been -- and ever shall be -- your friend.”

It is almost a question -- it is a risk not easily taken. Saavik knows Spock, and she knows that he is feeling very deeply.

“Yes!  _ Yes _ , Spock!” Jim’s voice is passionate, driven, as if with his words alone he can force Spock’s memories to return.  _ And perhaps he can. _

“The ship. Out of danger?”

“You saved the ship. You saved us all! Don't you remember?”

A pause. “Jim,” says Spock softly, but with growing surety, as if he and the Admiral are the only two people on the planet. “Your name is Jim.”

“Yes.”

A smile as bright as Vulcan’s star breaks over Kirk’s face. Spock turns back to the crew and Saavik moves with them, gathering around him with whom she considers a family, and for the first time in as long as she can remember, she starts, ever-so-slightly, to smile.

Today is the day a miracle occurred. Today is the day that love and lost affection came back from the dead, and Spock with them.

She looks at Spock, who has eyes only for Kirk. She looks at Kirk, who she has never seen so happy. She looks at Uhura laughing and Sulu grinning and Chekov’s beaming face and Scotty’s overjoyed expression and Dr. McCoy not even  _ trying _ to grumble.  
  


Sometimes, it seems, the universe has happy endings. Sometimes, those who are half one thing and half another find a place where they belong.

She knows she will remain on Vulcan. She does not know herself well -- now less than ever -- and wonders if the answers might be found among the vast libraries of books and parchments the Vulcans have accumulated. But for now she stands for one last time with the Enterprise crew, aligns herself with joy and hope over Vulcan rationality, and looks toward a bright new beginning with something like wisdom in her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to the absolutely wonderful user Femspirk (existentihowell) for looking this over for me. They're a brilliant writer!
> 
> Please leave comments if you are so inclined; they can really, really make my day!


End file.
